Posted April 2008 Online communities relieve anxiety about starting school
		For any student, starting at a new school can be an anxious time. The new Queensland Academies helped alleviate some anxiety before students first walked through their school gates by creating secure, online student communities. Powered by the Learning Place, the student communities - one for each academy - inspired discussions, questions and answers, giving students the chance to connect with their peers, teachers and principals so they could get to know each other before they met.

Their online discussions also resulted in some important decisions being made. New uniforms, school bands, student home stays, transport routes and at least one of the academies' mottos were debated and worked out online.

Password protection meant access to the communities was limited to the academies' students, teachers, parents and guardians. This upheld student privacy.

Dave Graham

One of the supporting community managers was Dave Graham, who has had many years of experience as a digital teacher. Dave said the communities worked because they made the most of students' passion for chatting online. 'So many students chat online at home. All we did was capture their enthusiasm and use it to build relationships and shared understandings, Dave said.

Seven months after it was launched, the Queensland Academy for Health Science's student community generated more than half a million website hits. The community's popularity was due to hands-on work from community managers and the academy's principal, Leanne Nixon. During the life of the community, Leanne was online daily, responding to student enquiries and raising new discussions, even during the Christmas break. Leanne said the community generated among students a sense of belonging to the academy before they set foot inside the school's gates. Students enjoyed their experiences so much they have high expectations for using similar communities in the future, Leanne added.

Besides the social benefits, the Health Science Academy's online community had an educational focus as well. Students used it to chat with health-related professionals including a state coroner, a behavioural optometrist and a veterinarian, inundating these online guests with pertinent questions. The community also included a range of tutorials designed to enhance students' ICT skills, from using Microsoft Word to creating websites, Wikis and web images. It featured generic information about the academy and an area where students and teachers could download important documents.

Each of the student communities was built in Blackboard, the Department's online learning system that is available through the Learning Place. While BlackBoard is widely known for online learning, the academies have proven its usefulness for connecting students and teachers and nurturing a spirit of collaboration.